When stepping up sales initiatives, shop owners stand at a crossroads: Should they hire a direct salesperson or go with a manufacturer’s rep? There are pros and cons to each. To start, fabricators should fully understand the economics behind the relationship between company managers and sales.

The most important parts of lean implementation are preparation—especially an objective assessment and development of the business and technical cases for lean—leadership that can get things done, appropriate training, resolution of people issues, and well-designed deployment methods.